In his review of Booklist Online that we posted last week, Peter Jacso promised one of his Proxy Search tools that’s now online here. Dr. Jacso tells ResourceShelf, “One can choose Google or Yahoo as a proxy, or both at the same time for a side by side comparison. Google seems to have better coverage and better hit rate, but not so much better as the hit count may suggest. The proxy does not have the sophisticated features of the subscription-based Booklist Online, but quickly finds the books at Amazon which apparently have licensed the reviews and offer the full text of thousands of reviews from Booklist (along with reviews from  several other review publications). This can be good for those who want quickly to look up reviewed books on a subject like terrorism without wading through hundreds of book records and cannot afford the steep Booklist Online subscription price but want to check the review of Booklist (often along with reviews from Kirkus, Publishers’ Weekly, Library Journal, NY Times Book reviews, etc.”

Postscript: Dr. Jacso tells us to expect another version of this tool using the Ask.com and MSN databases in the near future.

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